OCTOBER 2000 BROADSHEET - Patenting Life and the Future of Medicine
We had another very successful meeting to start the year on 28th September, set up by Dr Simon Goodman, who fielded an expert team to lead our discussion on Patenting Life and the Future of Medicine. His colleague Dr Neil Thornton, of Patent Agents Reddie and Grose, explained the criteria affecting patents in the biosciences and how the problems of recouping the huge investment required to develop medicines were exacerbated by the limitations of patent law and practice. For example, methods of diagnoses and treatment of illnesses were excluded and it was unclear whether gene sequences, discovered at great expense, could possibly be the property of the finder. The subject of a patent had to be legal, which therefore excluded human cloning.
These moral and practical dilemmas were discussed by Dr Michael Langford, a professor of Philosophy from Canada, who had had much experience on ethical committees there. He agreed that there had to be a balance between the need for investment in research and benefit to the public. Benificence versus Justice as he called it. If the companies took too much then only the very rich could benefit. The regulatory procedures cost so much that it was only worth developing drugs that could achieve a £600M market, so only the big 'popular' diseases could be tackled. Getting the balance right was the job of governments working with the industry and medical practitioners for the greatest good of the greatest number. There were other balancing acts such as the trade off between quality of life and survival. For example, a heart treatment could make a person more active and happy with a shorter life than one that kept the patient sedated and depressed.
Dr Andy Richards, our third speaker and a well known Cambridge entrepreneur in the biological field, started by emphasizing that all innovation was driven by profits. AIDS was a huge market but where the cures were needed most, as in Africa, there was the least ability to pay. In most health areas funding was no problem as good health and longevity are most people's priority. Thus, the future of the industry is assured and Cambridge is particularly well placed to exploit it. Small start-up companies had the advantage of speed over the slow but sure multi-million conglomerates. Andy foresaw far more use of the internet for self-diagnoses and an explosion of new treatments to suit a more demanding public. He covered personalised medicine, and 'biology in silico', ie. the development of new drugs entirely by computer. The industry would have to become less secretive and more co-operative to achieve the variety required, so perhaps patenting will become less important.
A healthy and diverse discussion followed. For example; the role of doctors either as purveyors of standard cures or as experimenters, and the role of WHO which had eliminated small pox and was now tackling malaria with the help of huge donations from benefactors like Bill Gates.
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